This sentence says it all...

...“While inspecting the roads we found some buildings which were not built according to official land plans and encroach on the state land. The buildings will need to be removed and there will be no compensation,” he said...

The full article may be read here:

https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50767974/n ... ws-mixed-r

OML

PSD-Kiwi wrote: ↑Wed Sep 30, 2020 10:50 am Oh I am not doubting that this is indeed happening, but in my experience if people were losing their legally owned, hard Titled land without compensation then there would be an uproar and would be all over social media, just seems odd that those affected are not making their voices heard.

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I agree with your sentiment. IMO, partially its due to the short notice. And partially, its because from what I've seen (which certainly isn't 100% of the town) there were only 2 areas currently being demolished. I've seen surveyors around town for a while now and if there are indeed 38 projects which will impact people then I'd assume as all of them pick up something will be shown via facebook.

In the area I live, its only a road widening project and several of the people impacted slightly actually knew they would be once surveying began. Most impact is on some guest houses that had "parking lot" on the side of the road and a couple of restaurants and shops that had also intruded into what was supposed to be the road. I'm not aware of anyone's home being demolished. But I definitely saw homes/buildings being demolished the other day and it was in broad daylight and certainly the area off route 6 somewhat close to the river was plain to see for most of the city that drives by during the day.

And lets face it - so many Khmer people have been driven from land that I think some folks are just numb to it - just part of life. What would be nice is for the government to follow up and penalize the government officials that approved the land sales that are now being considered to have intruded on government property, and then in some way compensate those that were misled.

I'd add that I sure hope they are going to actually put in new roads as they have totally destroyed a perfectly good road the past few months where we live - its literally falling apart currently as just too many heavy trucks and equipment being moved around.

PSD-Kiwi wrote:Oh I am not doubting that this is indeed happening, but in my experience if people were losing their legally owned, hard Titled land without compensation then there would be an uproar and would be all over social media, just seems odd that those affected are not making their voices heard.

Though it sucks, I'm assuming all dwellings were built alongside a road which had expansion plans and thus hard titles were never issued. Now people either rend up with a lot less land, or have to move and lose everything if their land wasn't very deep. Even on hard titled land you have to keep 3m from the edges. Some areas it's 12m+.

Taphul Road is being cleared out today. Lot of demolition working. Probably a meter or two on both sides.

In a sense you could count yourself lucky if it was a major road being put down by national or provincial gov.

If it is a small road/lane that is being repaired or upgraded by local gov (commune? district?) the adjacent landholders are often made to provide or pay for the materials AND do the actual work themselves - under close direction of course.
Not sure exactly how it works, but I have seen that happen often enough in PP and in the provinces. Never heard a peep of protest, at most a shrug of "Yep, that's the way it is".

First time i learned about it was in my very earliest days staying on the lake.
The busy end of the "main" small road heading into the tourist part was upgraded to concrete and suddenly one day all the shopkeepers wives and sons were out there, doing the digging, putting down the reo bar and pouring concrete. - half a lane, one property wide, bit by bit right up the road. One family at at time.
And i believe they had to pay for their own little section of the project too.

Has anybody experienced that as a landowner themselves?

No, they probably just decided to do it themselves and you assumed it was the government's initiative.

Thanks, I hadn't thought of that, Lex. ^^
But thinking and remembering thru the instances i have seen, you could be right.
However it was definitely not haphazard. Maybe organised themselves by a formal or informal commune/community initiative. ??

Yes I have seen it happening near my house and I have done some myself. Its not from the government - the road just gets so bad from lack of maintenance that the residents get together to try and do something. Perhaps a more prosperous community will pay for a cement road but poorer places will just spread material to try and smooth out the road. I have dumped several truckloads of stones at various times.

Its true that some of the current projects are just widening by a few metres but other projects are completely new roads like the road to the airport. Not much demolition is going on yet - its supposed to start tomorrow. A lot of current demolition work is being done by the landowners to salvage materials.